David Gulpilil is exceptional in this melancholic story about Australia’s unsettled history
Peter Weir’s films traverse the world – Belize, Bulgaria, Indonesia, Morocco, Turkey, the US, the Australian outback. Only a select few are set in Sydney, the city of his birth. The last of them was his 1977 film, The Last Wave.
After his break-out success, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave brings a similarly eerie treatment of Australia’s biggest city, with Weir conveying the nation’s anxieties about displacement and difference to pose fundamental questions about justice and spirituality.